


Roots Before Branches

by hatakaashi



Category: Haikyuu!!
Genre: Childhood, Gen, Growing Up, M/M, ushiten
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-11-19
Updated: 2016-11-19
Packaged: 2018-08-31 20:46:46
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings, No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,330
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/8593117
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/hatakaashi/pseuds/hatakaashi
Summary: Sometimes Ushijima remembers the way things used to be.





	

**Author's Note:**

  * For [phantomdieb](https://archiveofourown.org/users/phantomdieb/gifts).



> So I have 2 friends, one of whom said they think Ushijima is hostile-looking, while the other one is a total slut™ for the Wakatosh. After the latest Haikyuu!! episode, I really felt inspired to write smol Ushijima and smol Tendou. This is also inspired by lack of sleep and Glee's Roots Before Branches and their Imagine Dragon's cover of "It's Time". Kris, my broski, this one's for you ❤

Sometimes, if Ushijima closes his eyes, making sure he doesn’t squeeze too hard, he can still picture everything the way it was.

 

Sometimes, if he drones out the noise from the 7 a.m. city train and concentrates really hard, he might be able to see the big chestnut tree, the one with the swing set in his old backyard. The creaky one that had red and white chipping paint with bits of rust here and there. The one that had two swings side by side, but never mattered because the second one always stayed empty. The one that nobody ever came to swing with him on because he was too quiet and too lanky and too interested in stupid things like collecting dried out leaves and not interested enough in playing football. Not even seven years of age and already stuffed in a box labeled Weird.

 

Back then, Ushijima couldn’t pronounce his Rs properly, no matter how many times he tried, and that didn’t lend him any hands. Ma was already on his case for being a lefty.

 

Sometimes, when he gets dropped off at his stop and walks past the playground close to his house, he remembers spending most of his time climbing the monkey bars. Before he was pushed from them, resulting in a broken right hand. 

Kids can be cruel. Kids can be vicious. But he didn’t cry. The monkey bars were still his favorite.

_

Sometimes, when he gets to the library, if he keeps himself busy with homework long enough, people eventually leave and he is able to find an old battered copy of Volleyball Fundamentals. Dad had had the exact same one back in the day and if he closes his eyes, taking in the smell of old books and parchment, it’s possible he may find it in him to picture holding it in his tiny hands, thumbing through the leafy pages, hesitant and tremblingly shy that first time.

“Since you made me your accomplice when you took it, you might as well read it out to me.” Tendou had said that sunny July afternoon. “I won’t laugh, Ushijima-kun, I would never laugh. Just try.”

Tendou sat cross-legged in the grass and listened the whole time, totally rapt, as Ushijima stumbled his way through a horrible reading, with so many R words. Wing Spike **r**. Sette **r**. Middle Blocke **r**. Libe **r** o. Pinch Se **r** ve **r**.

Tendou hadn’t laughed at him, not once.

Instead, he had told him how brave that was of him and for those few minutes, Ushijima had felt it.

“Now try my name, please.”

Sa-to-ri.

Sometimes Ushijima remembers that.

_

 

Sometimes, when Ushijima passes through the school corridors, he likes to take his time looking at the colorful, happy scenes painted onto pieces of paper hanging on the walls. Some of them have hand prints with initials and others have houses with family members and wildly disproportionate barn animals and spaceships and planets. Ushijima might stop and let himself look at all the tacked up posters encouraging kids to imagine and make believe and dream big, just for a while. Just because.

 

Ushijima can remember what it’s like to do all those things. He did them too, before.

_

 

Some days, when it’s gloomy, Ushijima might not look at the blackboard, but out the window instead, and he might listen to the rain tap tap tapping against the window sills, and he might press his lips together when he thinks about the time he and Tendou built a blanket fort in which they hid while it thundered and crackled outside and he’d had to finish both mugs of hot cocoa, because Tendou was allergic to those small marshmallows that melt inside.

 

“Drink up, matey.” Tendou had said in, possibly, the worst pirate accent ever, giggling. “Drink up and become the strongest volleyball Ace this world has known. Arrrgh!”

 

And he might get lost remembering the way he and Tendou rolled around on his bedroom floor in little fits of laughter and daydreaming long enough, that the next morning before school he had to pick off bits of carpet fiber stuck in his hair.

 

Since that day, two things changed.

 

One - The seat on Ushijima’s right in class was never empty again. Nor the swing in his backyard.

 

And Two - it was never Ushijima-kun, but Wakatoshi-kun instead.

 

And Wakatoshi-kun somehow, with time, turned into Wakkun.

 

But Wakkun was reserved for when he was having the worst of days. And Tendou always knew when he was having one of those, like when Ma and Dad were arguing and Ma was shouting in the kitchen, telling him to go back to his room.

Tendou was always there to call him that, faultlessly.

Wakkun.

_

Sometimes, when Ushijima is measuring his height, comparing it to the previous little pen made pegs on his door frame, he would feel Tendou grinning from behind.

 

“You have grown so much, Wakatoshi-kun. You’re so much bigger now.”

 

_

 

Sometimes, he overworks himself at volleyball practice, but he doesn’t stop until he’s completely drained, mind unable to think. It’s only because Ushijima knows he’s too old for making believe out of things that large. He knows that once you reach a certain age, imaginary friends stop being okay. But it’s one of those things you aren’t supposed to speak of out loud, just like wetting your bed, because your childhood is over and you’re not a baby anymore. Because you’re sixteen.

 

Until you’re seventeen and you can hardly believe you made up something so detailed and believed in it for so long.

 

Until you’re eighteen and you realize you can’t go a day through university classes without experiencing a panic attack, and the only thing that can ease your mind isn’t the marijuana cigarette that your roommate is pushing into your face, or the endless shot glasses filled with alcohol that your classmates are handing you, but you, yourself, trying to dream him up all over again. And you wonder what he’d look like today, all grown up, if his red hair would still be glistening in the sunlight, if the little dusting of freckles over his cheeks would have faded over time, like the rest of him had.

 

Until you’re twenty and still spending your Friday nights at the gym with nothing but a net full of volleyballs to keep you company and you’ve never been kissed and you start to worry that something must be really wrong with you - something you can’t blame on Ma and the way she brought you up in constant screams and blames - because you might not even like girls and you let yourself imagine what you’d be doing right then, should Tendou still be around. Would the two of you still build blanket forts and watch Looney Tunes, followed by Tom and Jerry on Sunday mornings?

 

Until you’re twenty two years old and you want so bad to be as brave as he once thought you were, because you miss him so much that you’d do anything to bring him back. Because you’re hopeless and a fool and just as lonely as you were at the age of seven, during that sunny July afternoon when you’d taken Volleyball Fundamentals out of your purple backpack in your backyard. Because, real or not real, he’s still the best - and only - friend you ever had and sometimes it kills you that you had to let him go, wishing that you’d never been forced to grow up, not if it meant you had to go on without him.

 

“Wakkun. You’re the Ace of Japan’s National Volleyball Team, so please pick yourself back up and show everyone how strong you are. I always believed in you, didn’t I tell you that a million times before? Be brave. For me. But more importantly, for yourself. And don’t you worry about me disappearing. I will always be here when you need me, Wakkun.”

 

Thank you.

Satori.


End file.
